1. FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to an ink jet recording apparatus, and particularly, to an ink jet recording apparatus used as an information recording apparatus for an electronic typewriter, a word processor, a facsimile, a copying machine and so on.
2. DESCRIPTION OF THE PRIOR ART
There have been proposed recording apparatuses which use various types of recording heads depending on their respective recording methods, and record information on a recording medium such as paper, OHP sheet and so on; the recording medium is hereinafter called simply a recording paper or a paper. These recording methods include a wire-dot recording method, thermal-sensitive paper recording method, thermal transcription recording method and ink jet recording method and so on.
Among these methods, the ink jet recording method, in which ink droplets are ejected to the recording paper, has attracted a great deal of attention with its advantageous aspects such as low fabricating and operating costs and low noises recording.
In addition, in recent ink jet recording apparatus, especially with respect to the recording head used in the ink jet recording apparatus, the recording head can be fabricated using the semiconductor device technologies such as thin film growth technology and microscepic device process technology, and recording heads fabricated in much smaller dimension and with lower costs are realized. In response to this technical progress in fabricating recording heads, a recording apparatus is realized which is capable of color recording or halftone recording by using a plurality of such recording heads. Accordingly, it is required that the structure of the recording apparatus become smaller and more simplified.
The ink jet recording apparatus having the above described advantageous features is used as a recording apparatus in electronic typewriters, word processors, facsimiles and copy machines and so on. In every application, the ink jet recording apparatus is formed so as to be suited to the required functions and the usage specific to the application apparatus.
There has been a recent trend in electronic typewriters and word processors towards being fabricated as small-sized, lightweight and portable device. This trend also requires a compact and much simplified ink jet recording apparatus.
Under the above described trend, that is, toward a compact and simplified ink jet recording apparatus, it is required to simplify units forming the ink jet recording apparatus and furthermore to simplify mechanisms connecting these units to each other.